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Last.fm Denies Data-Sharing Accusations, Again

Do online music services turn over information to music industry groups like the Recording Industry Association of America?

Allegations surrounding CBS’s Last.fm service are bringing that question to the fore, and the answer is likely yes, sometimes.

As part of ongoing royalty tracking, online music services make information available all the time about most-played songs and other statistics — sometimes to labels, if they have direct royalty agreements with them, and sometimes to various other organizations. That includes groups like BMI, which collects royalties for music publishers, and SoundExchange, a group that collects royalties from online music services for the benefit of various artists. SoundExchange was spun out from the RIAA in 2003. Labels also like to stay on top of that type of information for research purposes.

But the Web site TechCrunch is reporting that Last.fm is going beyond sharing aggregated statistics and into the realm of sharing individual user information…